Aún Más Café Jesús from Evil Twin (left, imperial stout with coffee) and Aphrodite from Dieu Du Ciel (right, an unfiltered stout with cocoa and vanilla bean). Despite both being stouts, they have very different characteristics which you can observe right away by looking at the bottles: Aphrodite has 6.5% abv whereas AMCJ is 12% abv. Maybe it was a mistake to compare them, I'm not sure, but after the rich full body of AMCJ, Aphrodite seemed thin by comparison, despite delivering substantially on the vanilla and (to a lesser extent) the malt chocolate. ﻿

Xocoveza from Chris Banker / Stone / Insurgente. Wow. 5/5, which isn't a rating I hand out often. Strong on spices (especially cinnamon) but you don't really get any lack of depth the way you sometimes do with spice heavy beers. Also definitely more true cacao than malt-chocolate, which as a dark-chocolate lover runs more to my taste. Original, layered, well balanced. Time to scat and find a second bottle!﻿